Evaluating used equipment for a planned microcinema

[Frank Cox]

Raises the question. Begging the question is something entirely different.

(One of my pet grammatical peeves, and it's so common that it drives me crazy every time.)

[Ari Herman]

As a 50 seat room project, I think the exhaust topic begs some other basic questions about intended use cases, 1st runs?, business model, etc... like is there even a "booth" involved in this space? Big xenon not in a booth with full exhaust is possible (we have that setup here), but requires some real effort making a hush box and moving the exhaust sounds somewhere less offensive.

I see. So do you have it ceiling mounted and inside some kind of sound proof box with the exhaust channeled to another part of the building? I was planning to have a fairly large booth, and it wouldn't be hard to send exhaust out of the booth into an even larger space away from patrons. What did you use as a hsuh box?

The plan is to be ~95% repertory with a few first run movies (and private rentals of course). The REAL plan is to do that in the first year, see what people are most drawn to and make adjustments accordingly.

[Marco Giustini]

I am against ceiling mounted projectors or projectors sealed in small spaces. I've done a few and they're a nightmare to service. They often end up being neglected. Xenon machines in particular need proper access, if only just to align the lamp.
Also, when (not IF) the extraction fails, the projector will instantly overheat.

As a minimum, you need an easy access to it: a lift, a shelf, something that easily moves it in an accessible space.

I know you're just asking but too many people think it's a good idea without realising the consequences.

[Ryan Gallagher]

100% booth and accessible is always preferred as Marco suggests, even when it is smaller and can simply exhaust into the room.

some integrators/manufacturers have hush box designs. They are all an accessibility compromise. We have catwalks here, and our hush box is a crew built plywood and acoustic foam surround on both L&R sides of the CP2220. Its face hinges open making a door the width of the catwalk on both sides, and the lid on each side also hinges open. Designed with an enough clearance that about 4 people can stand or kneel within its footprint. Other than the lens area which protrudes over the audience, it is pretty accessible, if you can work on your knees.

our extraction fan is mounted in the back of an unused upper balcony loft, with about 40ft of ducting down to the projector, run on the lowest speed. Not perfect but pretty minimized to the audience. Some modern laser projectors are quieter naively than our whole setup is with the hush box efforts.

its funny cause this venue has a projection booth at the top, but when the balcony was converted into classrooms and offices, the shared wall to that upper vintage 35mm booth went away.

if you have room for a booth do that!

[Marcel Birgelen]

I hate in-house mounted projectors. It's a cinema, not a lecture hall. The projector is the source of the magic, it needs to be hidden from public.

Even our screening room has a fully sized booth and I'm very happy to have it. It also serves as general equipment room. We have a laser machine and a xenon machine for color grading. The exhaust of the xenon machine needs to be funneled outside or properly filtered due to ozone created by high-powered xenon lamps.

[Leo Enticknap]

I am against ceiling mounted projectors or projectors sealed in small spaces. I've done a few and they're a nightmare to service.

Amen, Brother!

The training class where they give all those nice free lunches and let you practice with the projector on a lovely, knee height pedestal with 10ft of floor space all around it makes swapping out a light engine with a bad pixel so easy, until you get out into the field and are confronted by this...

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...or this:

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...or this:

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...or this. The sides don't open. It's an NC900 in there (yes, I know I uploaded a Barco test pattern into it). Good luck changing out the lamps!

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I've learned through bitter experience that if we are contacted by a customer asking for service, one of the first things we do is to ask questions about, and for photos of, the physical location of the projector. If we are asked to install or commission a projector in a location such as these, we will also flag up the additional service and repair costs that the customer is letting themself in for. If a projector does need a repair that cannot be done in situ, then the two options are either that the customer takes care of moving it to a location where it can be worked on (with access to the necessary power supply) and then back to its operating location when the repair is done, or we hire riggers to do it and pass the cost along.

The most spectacular example of this I had to deal with was earlier this year, when this projector (in a film school)...

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...sprouted a bad pixel and needed the mk. I to mk. II light engine upgrade.

We had to identify a day when a nearby conference room was not in use, and hire riggers to move it there for me to work on...

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...and then put it back up in the booth when the job was done. Even with that support, adjusting the Scheimpflug, convergence, and mirrors afterwards was a nightmare (due to the absence of a viewing port visible from where you need to physically be to reach the controls), that required two of us communicating with walkies, and a lot of time and patience. The decision to install that projector in that location caused a four-figure increase in the cost of this repair job for the customer.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Looking at that last booth... at least it is a booth.... Having those projectors high up is a common issue with smaller, converted rooms. The booth is just an extension of the original room, often without a raised floor, so the projector needs to be high up... But this mounting solution looks like it's going to give way one day, given it needs to support a 220 lbs machine. Also, I see two projectors that are clearly at normal level, and a potential window/porthole much lower, partly covered with a bunch of stuff that could probably be easily relocated.

[Leo Enticknap]

The 35mm projectors have not been used in living memory, they likely never will be, and there is another room on the campus that has much better ones (Kinoton 16/35s). I have advised the manager there for many years that it would be sensible to get rid of the film projectors and set the SP4K centrally on a pedestal. My guess is that there are either political issues in play that I don't know about, or that the time suck and logistical challenge of making this happen has ensured that it remains a low priority.

Anything construction related on a university campus has to go through 76 different committees, so I'm guessing that the weight bearing ability and seismic resilience of the Unistrut and threaded rod arrangement has been inspected and meets all the relevant regulations. But that doesn't make it possible to do many service and repair tasks that this projector needs with it on the shelf.

[Marco Giustini]

Ages ago I was involved in a similar situation than Leo pictured with the Barco up to the ceiling.

Someone decided to install an NEC up on a shelf so the top lid could not be accessed. The projector wasn't pre-tested and developed a fault OOTB. We asked them to arrange for the projector to be moved to the floor before we could attend. And if memory served, shortly afterwards the ICP died and the metal frame which was holding the projector in place was preventing cards from being removed - so projector moved on the floor again! It was an NC2000 or similar, not a small one!

And as Leo mentioned, service becomes a nightmare and you just end compromising. I have somewhere a picture of myself literally laying on top of a projector inside a hush box to try and reach the scheimpflug bolts (no access from the front) and without being able to see the screen. I did my best but after a few hours my muscles hurt and the focus was still not great!

It's just simpler for the salesman to sell the elegant and small-footprint solution. But then you pay the price over time.

[Stefan Scholz]

Even if you communicate that we need access to the top and sides in case of service, some "architects" still like to mount the projector close to a ceiling. Or in case of small room theatres, where the original 35 mm height, given by the 35 mm projector at around 4 to 4.5 ft, was used for the original digital projector, they decide to move the new laser as close as they can towards the ceiling of the booth. For reasons of misunderstood "laser safety". In theory it was never allowed to have a projector installed, where one could directly look into the beam, but for a limited screen, the light output is low enough to have natural eye reaction prevent a harm. Same applies to the new laser like a 2306/2406 or SP2K-7, 1100L model.
Very difficult to service and nearly impossible to get it down in an otherwise cramped and piled up with crap space.

[Sascha Roll]

I can only agree with everything said before. I still have PTSD from the one Barco 6E I was forced to install in a "cabinet" style booth. I mean, at least it was accessible from floor level. But adjusting anything was a big PIA. Anno 2016...
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[Ryan Gallagher]

This topic hit quite a nerve! My only experience with a factory built hush-box was not a good one either. They had power problems and never got the box cooling circuits working, it was mounted on a scaffold in the balcony, had to run it in the box but with all the doors open, an odd tent of packing blankets was used to augment the situation.

I also expect there is a lot of unfortunate foreshadowing here. Our event projector in the big room (not the booth DCI projector) is going to be built into the mezzanine rail architecture during our remodel. That promises to be no fun to service.

The smaller room does not appear to have a plan to add a booth in it's rebuild plans that I have seen... and will probably have some half baked ceiling or mezzanine mount as well for it's DCI laser projector, but I have a little more time to get in front of that one if I can manage those conversations.

[Ari Herman]

Since folks seem to generally feel that the Barco DP2K-10s is a better projector, I'm wondering if anyone who has worked with them can speak to the prospect of buying a used one with ~25K hours. In particular, I am wondering what parts tend to break on these, and what I should be paying attention to and ask about when examining one that I might want to buy. Thanks!

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

<edited to highlight the picture I'm referring to>

The most spectacular example of this I had to deal with was earlier this year, when this projector (in a film school)...

image.png

...sprouted a bad pixel and needed the mk. I to mk. II light engine upgrade.

We had to identify a day when a nearby conference room was not in use, and hire riggers to move it there for me to work on...

image.png

...and then put it back up in the booth when the job was done. Even with that support, adjusting the Scheimpflug, convergence, and mirrors afterwards was a nightmare (due to the absence of a viewing port visible from where you need to physically be to reach the controls), that required two of us communicating with walkies, and a lot of time and patience. The decision to install that projector in that location caused a four-figure increase in the cost of this repair job for the customer.

Leo, is that a certain location I am familiar with?

If so,I am partly to blame for that projector location as the room's ceiling was very low and the space allocated for the booth wasn't optimal. (As well as the sightlines from the projectors to the screen)... the room next to that one was supposed to be the location for all of this, but. University politics got in the way as usual and that setup was relegated to the smaller space with the much lower ceiling. If it's not the same location, I am surprised that someone copied that layout as it was a pain from day one.

[Marco Giustini]

Since folks seem to generally feel that the Barco DP2K-10s is a better projector, I'm wondering if anyone who has worked with them can speak to the prospect of buying a used one with ~25K hours. In particular, I am wondering what parts tend to break on these, and what I should be paying attention to and ask about when examining one that I might want to buy. Thanks!

25K hours is 8.5 years at 8 hours a day

Optics will degrade in any projector. The reflector goes first as it has to deal with UV. So please acknowledge that that S10 might output down to 50% of its rated light output even with a brand new lamp. A new reflector could improve the situation.

Barco engines are sealed - that is, the gap between the DMD and the prism is sealed. That means no dirt can get in. That said, please remember what I said earlier on: earlier S10 units basically had no filtration and they were getting TRASHED inside. Barco addressed the problem later on (it escapes me how they didn't notice that in the first place) but if the projector has sucked in dirt for 10K hours, it might not be happy inside.

Remember spare parts are very expensive for cinema projectors - I don't know for how long the S10 is going to be supported for, you might want to check with an integrator.

I would check the following:
- State of the guts of the projector, are they dusty or (worse) greasy?
- State of the output prism and back lens element - are they covered in dust?
- Filters state and whether it's an upgraded model
- Play RGBW and check for dead/stuck pixels
- Measure on/off contrast ratio
- Measure ANSI contrast ratio - this is the one affected by dust in the optics
- Try to calculate the lumen output. You can get a ballpark idea if you set up a white field on a given (white, not high gain) screen, measure the brightness (uncorrected) and see what the projector SHOULD achieve versus what the projector achieves. Remember the screen age plays a role and also the lamp age/alignment also plays a role

This is what is on top of my mind right now. I'll post a pic of a thrashed S10 once my NAS has finished loading the thumbnails

Are you aware that your setup will need a specific lens with either the NEC or the Barco? I mean, there is a chance the lens they come with is going to work but I wouldn't bet on it.